States Fight Internet Tax Ban, Cite VoIP Concern

PetiePooo writes "From an article at PCWorld: The Multistate Tax Commission is fighting a bill which makes the moratorium on internet taxes permanent. Their complaint is that it could be interpreted to include VoIP telephony such as Packet8 and Vonage, and they would lose that lucrative tax base as people switch from incumbent providers. The House has already approved the bill. When will the politicians figure out that VoIP is a going to end up as a product, not a service? Voice will be just another form of data. Here's another related article."

Comments

SCO acquires a new business partner - GNAA

[Anonymous Coward]

Darl here, with another fine Fr1st P0st. After all -- SCO did everything first, and the rest of the responses to this story will owe their heritage to a foundation built on SCO's staff of talented programmers.

You may be wondering why SCO salesmen are not answering your numerous calls while you try to order more SCO licenses. Well, we aren't answering the phones because we're too busy celebrating our newest business partner. Rather than explaining it myself, I'll let our formal press release do the talking. Take it away, Mr. Reuters...

LINDON, Utah, Sept. 8/PRNewswire - FirstCall/ -- The SCO Group, Inc. (Nasdaq: SCOX - News), the owner and licensor of the core UNIX operating system source code, today announced its second Fortune 500 clent for the SCO Linux IP license, the GNAA (Nasdaq: RHAT - News), developer of fine Slashdot trolls on irc.efnet.net #GNAA, also well-known for revolutionizing small business development with its "Step 2: ??????" profit model. The availability of the SCO Intellectual Property License for Linux affords Linux deployments to come into compliance with international law for the use of all 2.4 and future kernels. The run-time license permits the use of SCO's intellectual property, in binary form only, as contained in Linux distributions.

By purchasing a SCO Intellectual Property License, customers avoid infringement of SCO's intellectual property rights in Linux 2.4 and Linux 2.5 kernels and assure Darl financial security for the purchase of his second home. Because the SCO license authorizes run-time use only, customers also comply with the General Public License, under which Linux is distributed. Source may still be distributed under the terms of the GPL, however source distributors are held accountable for all violation of SCO's IP. Indemnification is provided for customers of runtime clients only. Read that twice, dirty hippy. You're not in the clear yet.

GNAA spokesperson penisbird said of the licensure, "coming into compliance affords us a new competitive advantage with the other Slashdot authors. By being in the right, we can thumb down our noses at not only the Windows users and the BSD-thieving Mac Users, but also the unwashed Linux hippies running stolen code on their parents' PCs." VP of anus enlargement goat-see added, "fr1st p0st? damn i miss. how do i next story?"

Mr. Darl McBride concurred with GNAA's analysis, adding "We soon hope to convince additional clients such as Trollklore and Cabal of Logged In Trolls of the benefits of licensing SCO's valuable IP. Also, I <3 GNAA bunny. (@.@)" JesuitX clarified the nature of the SCO and GNAA alliance, adding "We're more than just a licensing client. We're also going to be helping to bring these other potential licensors into compliance. We can break them in little by little as paying sublicensors. The alternative is pretty horrible. Our lawyers can take a reticent client from virgin to hello.jpg [figure 2] in under an hour, and believe me -- it is not pleasant."

Commander Taco was unavailable for comment, however Cowboy Kneel was said to ask for a print of [figure 2] for his basement apartment. Simoniker remained British and unable to spell "color," while Timothy responded by posting the same story six times, and Hemos reposted a seventh time, the submission differing only from his application of that damned Einstein icon.

If you have mod points and would like to support GNAA, please moderate this post up.

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god damn

[Anonymous Coward]

are you all so awed by my first post that you arent posting any more comments below it? haha

You insensitive clod

[DrInequality]

In Soviet Australia, we already pay for bits, not bandwidth

Once again thank GWB

[Anonymous Coward]

while the rich bask in their tax cuts the states are nearing financial collapse, what with Iraq costs and GWB go-it-alone attitude you have one hell of an tab to pay that is money that could of been spent on public services, health , hell 87billion you could have had free broadband for everyone for 2years !

now the states are stuck, they need to raise vast amounts of cash from somewhere and it doesnt grow on trees, so as time goes on you will see individual states get more and more desperate as expenditure rises yet their primary means of income (income taxes) has been cut.

Witness the dollars decline as the world realises you are digging yourselves into a financial hole that you might not get out from, and the ordinary man will suffer the most while the rich on their tropical offshore islands will wonder what all the fuss was about.

whats staggering is how one political party can cause so much damage in such a short time

Once again thank GWB

[Anonymous Coward]

while the rich bask in their tax cuts the states are nearing financial collapse, what with Iraq costs and GWB go-it-alone attitude you have one hell of an tab to pay that is money that could of been spent on public services, health , hell 87billion you could have had free broadband for everyone for 2years !

now the states are stuck, they need to raise vast amounts of cash from somewhere and it doesnt grow on trees, so as time goes on you will see individual states get more and more desperate to extract money as public expenditure rises yet their primary means of income (income taxes) has been cut, voip,internet tax is just the tip of the iceberg.

Witness the dollars decline as the world realises you are digging yourselves into a financial hole that you might not get out from, and the ordinary man will suffer the most while the rich on their tropical offshore islands will wonder what all the fuss was about.

whats staggering is how one political party can cause so much damage in such a short time

mod me for my comment not my username

VOIP

[Anonymous Coward]

Kristen, you look burnt, or dead.

Here's a good idea for a tax

[Alien Conspiracy]

They should put a 1c tax on each domain name registered.

This would be trivial for most people.

Except VeriSign, who have just registered an infinite number of domain names using their 'wildcard' method.

So VeriSign would end up owing $infinity to the IRS. Hehehehe!

Funny, but brings up a serious idea...

[Motherfucking Shit]

I think that there should be a tax imposed on people/corporations who file civil lawsuits and lose them. This would not apply to everyone who lost a lawsuit, only to those who initiated the suit and subsequently lost. If someone sued you and won, you would not be taxed, and neither would they.

For example, suppose that SCO sues IBM, and SCO loses. SCO should then have to pay a tax to the government for having wasted taxpayer money by tying up the judicial system with a suit which was found to be without merit. After all, assuming such suit makes it to trial, we (the taxpayers) are the ones footing the bill for the judge, the jury duty pay, the court reporters' salary, the cost of operating the court facilities during the trial, etc.

This would kill two birds with one stone:

a) Cut out a lot of bullshit frivolous lawsuits

b) Make the government a bit of bank on those who went ahead with said bullshit frivolous lawsuits

Who's with me? Vote Motherfucking Shit in 2004... :)

An analogy....

[wowbagger]

Believing that giving more money to the government will reduce deficits is like believing that buying an alcoholic another drink will slake his thirst.

The only real way to solve this problem is to put measureable, non-revokable penalties on government officials who overspend - for example, by saying that Congress shall not be paid, nor accrue retirement benefits, during any year in which the government runs a deficit (and a deficit shall be defined simply as "spending more money than you took in", no more funny accounting tricks).

We must be able to run a deficit during times of crisis (think World War II), but there needs to be a strong disincentive to prevent perpetual crisis.